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Ok, my application for Div 7 is in. My apologies for the delay. Time zone wonkiness + other errands eating up my morning prevented me from having an opportunity to check the online listings again until just now. I shall endeavor to be more timely in the future!

I will now interrupt all the organising (we're still missing Des from div 3, Meatloaf and mobiushibashi from 5!!) to put in the first match report of the new season....

Last night, me and Phil played the opening game of season 10 of the Divisions of Death, division 4. A nice normal fine day as my brand new humans faced off against his lightly levelled lizards (couple with block, ag4 skink, another with side step). The TV difference bought me a wandering apothecary (to make up for the fact i was starting without one!) and a bloodweiser babe (to get up any guys who've gone toe to toe with a saurus). Phil has 6 saurii, one krox, and 4 skinks. I'm facing that with an ogre, 4 blitzers, one thrower, one catcher and 4 linemen. I have 3 rerolls to Phil's 2. Phil wins the toss and opts to receive. I put blitzers and my ogre on the line to get knocked down, then kick to him. Phil goes to work, knocking down a lineman to create a hole and running a skink through, bashing my line (2 turn stuns on both my blitzers, great!), picking the ball up and getting it onto the line. My turn, I get bashy right back at him, which is where it goes wrong.... for Phil. First hit sees a saurus go off, badly hurt, then another get KO'd. My MA7 blitzer runs around behind his saurus and hits the skink, knocking the ball free.

Following turn, Phil (still in shock from his Saurii going down!) bashes back and picks up the ball. Over a couple of turns, I keep bashing to get the ball bak, but Phil's moving Saurii over to make life hard. I KO at least one skink during this exchange. Eventually, he gets away with his skink to the other side of the field. I bash him again but he eventually gets the ball, runs into my half and dodges away on turn 6 for the touchdown. I have 2 turns to return the favour.

Phil's KO'd saurus stays down, as does my catcher. My other Ko'd player returns. Phil kicks to me and I get an extra reroll. It's fairly deep to my right, where I'd set up strong. I bash his wall a bit, protect the ball, then blitz into his half to attack his skinks. I badly hurt one, then finish with my blitzer into his half. I follow up with a lineman there as a scoring threat. Phil proceeds to bash back, approaching my semi-cage with a lizard after blitzing downfield. Most of his other guys are tied up on the line. It my turn 7, so need to get upfield. I push one saurus back with a blitz onto the sideline, one dice knockdown another lizard with another blitzer. My thrower runs upfield, makes a perfect pass, the blitzer catches it and runs to within one square of the touchline (didn't want to use the goforit, or give phil another chance to get his KOs back). My blitzer is entirely out of range of his team, as he'd moved his skinks into my half to try to steal another TD, presumably. Phil's turn, he goes to bash. He hits my thrower (who annoyed him!) and gets the kill. Luckily my wandering apothecary is on good form and remediates that to badly hurt, meaning he's back on next half. He then gets a both down result, ending the turn. I run in on turn 8 to level the scores. All my KO's get back up, apart from my badly hurt blitzer, Phil's still down one KO'd skink, one badly hurt skink and one badly hurt saurus. His KO'd saurus returns.

Phil kicks back to me, and the ball goes deep. I bash his line, with the intention of getting through to blitz his 2 remaining skinks, I need this half to take a while to score so his skinks can't run one back in against me. I blitz into his AG4 skink with a lineman, get a both down and choose to take it, KOing the skink. Only one left for Phil now :-). Phil pushes at least one saurus down the flank towards the ball which is on my touchline, surrounded by a lineman and my catcher. He then bashes up my line, but to no great gain. I stand up my linemen up there again and continue to tie up his saurii. His skink has run out onto the right flank, so I get a blitzer free and perform his task, blitzing into his skink and KOing him as well. No skinks on the field should make this task easier...

My thrower finally picks up the ball, my blitzer after his blitz steps in to tie up the saurus on that side. Another is approaching too now. There's no way of running clear. The saurii knock down their marking blitzer and approach the 'cage' (its a pretty sorry cage :-)). I need a way out of the corner. The following turn, I blitz into the marking saurus, push him onto the line, where my catcher (!) pushes the saurus off the pitch. Leading to the second badly hurt saurus of the day.I mark up the other threats to stop them approaching, then continue bashing the linelizards, where we've been at a stalemate all half.

The Kroxigor has broken free and is approaching now, assisting the other saurus to try and get free, but only gets a push in the right direction. Phil is running out of players, with only the Krox and 4 saurii left on the field. I decide to go for it with a saurus breathing down my neck. I hand off to the catcher, who then runs across the pitch, makes his 8, then makes both goforits (one at a time, with a reroll - carefully!) to get 10 squares away and almost safe. My linemen gang up on the one saurus on that side to knock him down and get him marked up. My ogre blitzes into the middle of my half to knock down a saurus and make life hard for phil to get across.

From this point its a foregone conclusion. I'v tied up the saurii and have numbers on the field. After 2 turns of his Krox finally boneheading (after a very reliable match so far!), along with his other saurii being entirely marked and unable to get away, my catcher is standing on his touchline, waiting out for turn 16 (As I explain to Phil, there could be a riot on kickoff, causing him to get 2 turns. And with a skink, he can still score!). I score turn 16. And what do you know, we get a riot. The clock goes back to 15. Phil has 2 turns to score. He had to set up with his one returned skink back to pick up the ball, so his skink can't score in 2 turns, so he needs a saurus to get in and score. He runs downfield with a saurus whilst all my guys are pretty much standing on my line. He then passes downfield with the skink, which scatters and misses the saurus. I move my guys back upfield, get 2 on the ball and the saurus, manoeuvre others in close and blitz the saurus down. It's all over. I try a pass/catch for points (fails) and Phil spends his last turn making a couple of hits and then a cynical foul on one of my linemen, which gets his returned skink sent off to end the game.

So a 2-1 grind victory against lizards without using any cages. An interesting match. Phil was rightfully annoyed by his early loss of 2 saurii, from which he never really recovered. With only 5 big guys on the field, i was able to tie them up more effectively and get into his skinks, delaying his first touchdown (probably more than i should have done, to be honest), then smashing into the skinks for the rest of the game to try to disable his ball handling. Apart from those armour rolls, the dice were reasonably well distributed. Both of us had a few both down/skull results. I had to make a fair number of one dice blocks throughout, but most of the key ones were at least with a blitzer to gain some reliability. They still probably went better than I usually expect them to. I also didn't suffer many injuries myself, with only 2 all match (one which the apothecary fixed). I did receive a couple of KOs, but all the other armour breaks led to 2 turn stuns, of which I had about 7/8 during the game. So maybe I was a bit lucky there. I was certainly getting stuck in :-).

Nonetheless, a good opening match for my humans, gaining one level on my catcher (who gained a defensive 'wrestle'), and enough cash to buy myself a permanent apothecary (rather than relying on a wandering one to fix up my players!). Onto the next match against Elesium's Chaos Ravagers...

Division F saw its opening match with my orcs, the Skullsmashin' Greens, against Screwie's Bloody Gobbos. Right from the kick-off, hilarity ensued as Screwie's chainsaw dude and a ball-and-chains fanatic mowed through my defensive lines. On turn 4, I had 3 of my orcs injured and three more K.o.'ed, so the goblins had no problem scoring the 1-0. I didn't get any of my downed orcs back, so I had problems moving the ball forwards after receiving the subsequent kick-off. Screwie took advantage of that and had a quick 2-0 touchdown before the end of the first half.

After his secret weapons got banned during half-time, it became a bit easier for me to get some proper game going, but I have to admit that Screwie's goblins simply outplayed me. They stalled me quite well, rerolls were unlucky for both of us, and so the match ended in a 2-0 victory for the Bloody Gobbos and it was a well-deserved one.

Congratz to Screwie for a great first match and I'm looking forward to the next round.

The Seaside Sirens met the "Mice to see u"-rats of KayD on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Moral was high among both teams, and the fans cheered lustily several time, providing ample rerolls to both teams that proved to be quite necessary.

The Amazons won the toss and elected to practice their kicking. Much needed, it seemed, as the kick went short and into their own half by a single tile.

The Mice began an offense on the right side, but after much scuffling, the Sirens managed to break the ball free and into the hands of their Thrower, who securely passed it on to Lyxana the Catcher. A counter-touchdown in turn 5 for the Sirens led to much jubilation and high moral. So much that the Sirens stole the Mice's offence with a well-timed Blitz!

A blitzer positoned herself under the ball, ready to intercept the Sirens' own kick - but failed to catch the ball.

Some clever scuffling later saw a desperate Gutter Runner make a few dodges, an inspired grab and an even more inspired pass, followed by an impressive catch (and an impressive failed interception), another dodge... and an unlikey Touchdown for the Mice in Turn 7.

With two moves left, the Amazons set up a beautiful play. A simple shove, a simple dodge and a hand-off to the Catcher would have sufficed for a 2-1 in Turn 8... but the only failed dodge of the entire game (on the Sirens' side) ruined the beautiful execution quite drastically.

After an energetic first half, the second half continued to see a lot of action.

While the ball was still in the air from the Mice's kick, the rats rearranged their defensive lines quite efficiently.

By now, the Amazons had numerical superiourity and were intent to use it. Slowly moving two cages forward (one around the catcher, another around their thrower), the Sirens made the single most important mistake in the entire match by attempting a difficult pass to clear the ball safe. Which failed, obviously, and in the worst way possible - landing in front of a gutter runner.

A quick grab and a hand-off saw the ball deep within the Siren's home turn, but a sprinting Blitzer stopped the lone Runner. But where there's one rat, there's many rats, as the saying goes, and a second Runner showed up from the sewers and scored the Mice's second touchdown in Turn 12.

An angry scuffle ensured on the left flank, producing the rat's only casualty. Unless counting a certain Stormvermin which remained asleep for the entire duration of the match.

Some hearty shoving, blitzing and blocking later saw the ball again in Lyxana's capable hands, and scoring the equalizing 2-2 in the Siren's turn 16, followed by a brief revenge scuffle from the rats, in which they managed to slightly bruise a linewoman.

2 - 2 in a highly energetic match with a lot of movements, a lot of scuffles and no serious injuries at all - a wonder, considering our AVs!

Cheers for the match, KayD, and go and kill those orcs!

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Guessing I got confused. Didn't realise the league was restarting so soon. So had not been checking due to friends visiting.

Will sort the game asap, and if will not be quick enough, am happy for you to award the win to Jaytee. Also a little confused as I thought I was staying in division D.

Apologies again,

Des.

Still confused I'm afraid. But in a good way. :-)

What you needed to do quickly was just reapply to division 3. You were moved from D because some others didn't show up in time, leaving gaps in the divisions. I've started the division now that you have. There's still 10 days left for actually playing the game.

I think division 5 is the only one not started properly, that one is still missing Meatloaf and mombiushibachi.

Great game VV! Thanks very much for the entertaining write up also :) I think you probably deserved to win but Skaven are good when you are lucky I suppose.

You got very bad luck in the initial first turns (and your hilariously lazy Stormvermin), and I made a horrible, stupid and potentially game-losing mistake with that long pass - if anything, I'm glad I managed to equalize. :)

NETWORKING 101 SIGNATURE INCOMING
Playing games with each other makes for the best business contacts, so feel free to add me on LinkedIn.
You should also follow me on Twitter.

I've had a message from Meatloaf so he should be in tonight. I'll be accepting his application then. As Khryses is an existing player, he'll have first dibs on the remaining free slot, but if you apply too Rakysh, then whoever has their application in tonight when I go in to division 5 will get the slot. Division 5 will be starting tonight, to complete all the divisions :-).

What you needed to do quickly was just reapply to division 3. You were moved from D because some others didn't show up in time, leaving gaps in the divisions. I've started the division now that you have. There's still 10 days left for actually playing the game.

I think division 5 is the only one not started properly, that one is still missing Meatloaf and mombiushibachi.